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[Thread] My yoga studio has a $25-35 day-of cancellation fee if you can’t prove you’re sick. Today I called & asked if I could skip class because I had bad period cramps. They said they let people off the hook the 1st time but after, you need a doctor’s note, “no exceptions.”
This (albeit minor) incident made me think of how society discourages people from taking care of their bodies - especially people with uteruses & people with chronic health issues, who can’t always get a doctor’s note on days when they feel shitty. But also everyone.
We all have off days, and many of us have others to care for. In this go-go-go culture where even something like a yoga studio (which supposedly promotes balance & listening to your body) pressures you to be “on” all the time, how can our bodies, hearts, & souls have a voice?
We’re rewarded monetarily & socially for pushing through discomfort, which has its value when essential but makes us sick in the long-run, when our bodies speak through severe pain & illness so that we’ll finally listen to them.
I’d like to see people rewarded for taking excellent care of their health, for being devoted to their families, & for being generous with their time & money. When this doesn’t happen, people live in fear of scarcity & treat others the way they’ve been treated: as resources.
Flexibility, rest, & compassion are undervalued because they're considered feminine, and instead we are taught that professional recognition, financial gain, & competition are what will make us happy. We feed & feed our brains while shaming our bodies & hearts for being hungry.
Sometimes we even cheat & cut corners. Because that’s what people & businesses have been doing to us. Cheating us out of love, out of family, out of health. Cutting corners to get richer while leaving us behind. So we do the same because we want to be the “winners.”
Then one day we realize that shoving others down to climb the corporate ladder never made us happy. Because what makes us happy is lifting others up. And then we have a choice to break free from the fears of those who raised us, which were not even theirs to begin with.
It is those with privilege who first must make the choice to stop scrambling to earn earn earn & offer their money & time to their own well being & to others. Only then will all people even have that option.
If needing to take a sick day or a long parental leave is weak, let us be weak. It’s better than being bullied by those who judge us by our weaknesses. It’s better than being mindless money-making machines. It is better than neglecting those we love, including ourselves.
